I picked up an ITT Mackay MSR 8000 from an overseas auction and it arrived today. The box had a small tear in the corner that I did not think anything about. While unpacking the radio from the endless layers of bubble wrap a friendly scorpion popped to the surface.

I was elbows deep in the box and it could have quite easily rewarded me for my zealous Christmas-like package unwrapping. A shoe quickly terminated it's traveling permit.

This thing as a few inches long and looked a lot more threatening than the albino-mutant miniature scorpions we have in certain parts of the southeast US.

---------------Maybe this is payback for all of the rubber snakes that I coiled up in outdoor equipment enclosures at remote transmitter sites.

You realise you have started a whole new generation of urban myths about things found in radio equipment.I feel inadequate now, as the most I have found is a mummified mouse stuck (literally) between two circuit boards.Oh well, time to go online shopping in places with poor fumigation and good bug populations.

Back some years ago, before word processing migrated to PC's, my employer had a stand-alone, dedicated word processing machine. One day, the machine crashed and the service tech traces it to a dead cockroach caught in the keyboard!!!

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